La Minerve weekend

If you're on Facebook, you can see the pictures there...

Last Thursday night was spent getting things ready for the weekend and packing the car so we could head up North straight after work on Friday.

I managed to leave work at 2:45 and went to meet Tim at his office. We got on the road after picking up some Lebanese pizza at Andalos' and made it to somewhere in Laval before hitting traffic. The commuter lane was not any faster. I really don't know how people can do that day after day...Anyhow, we made it to La Minerve in about 2 1/2 hours, I think.
Cathy, Eric, Marc, Laurel and their respective offspring had arrived a few hours earlier and our hosts, Katja & Jouni & their 2, had arrived only shortly before us. We set up camp, dealt with the mosquitoes and greeted the last arrivals for the night, Maya, Katherin, Robbie, France (and Tigger.) We sat by the campfire and gazed at the stars and hit the hay sometime after 12:30.

Not having Olaf to keep me company in the early morning, I slept in til 7 on Saturday. And so day 1 of relaxing and having a great time with our friends began. The first arrivals of the day were Stéphanie and Olaf, later followed by day-trippers Julie, David & Arianne, Gillian and François (with their dog Chica) and finally Geneviève and Stéphane, who stayed the night.

We partook in the usual activities that we all enjoy so much: swimming, volleyball, frisbee-golf, bocce, hammocking, catching up with friends, reading, baby-watching, eating, uh, drinking and then some!

We all had various things that we cooked on the fire for supper but Olaf's grill with charcoal proved to emit a more reliable and even heat source for cooking on.
As usual, no one went starving and everything looked very tasty. We had some very envious looking dogs on our hands!

The rest of the evening was spent by the campfire, toasting marshmallows, talking, singing and listening to the guitar players. ( I won't mention the drinking!)

Sunday morning brought a few raindrops while some of the group packed up. Tim and I were in no hurry to get back to the city so we stuck around and waited for the sun to come out and only left in the late afternoon.

Driving slowed down, as expected, after St-Sauveur but we got home in about 2 hrs 10 min to the wonderful surprise of having the weekend papers sitting on the front stoop even if we'd called to temporary stop delivery.

So, that folks, was, in a nutshell, our first camping trip of the year and hopefully won't be our last!?